Casus Belli for a Spanish-Japanese War?

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Replacing the Russo-Japanese War and Spanish-American War with a Spanish-Japanese War has been brought up a few times on this site. What would be a suitable and realistic casus belli for such a war? It doesn't have to be post-1900.
 
Replacing the Russo-Japanese War and Spanish-American War with a Spanish-Japanese War has been brought up a few times on this site. What would be a suitable and realistic casus belli for such a war? It doesn't have to be post-1900.

Probably best putting this pre-1900, I have serious doubts about how you would ever get Spain and Japan in a war with each other post 1900. Neither have much interests anywhere near each other after 1900, nor do they the ability to project against one another. Remember, they are really, REALLY far away from each other for a start. Spain is also undergoing serious problems at home. They had lost the Philippines by this point, the only place that could be of potential interest between the two.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Probably best putting this pre-1900, I have serious doubts about how you would ever get Spain and Japan in a war with each other post 1900. Neither have much interests anywhere near each other after 1900, nor do they the ability to project against one another. Remember, they are really, REALLY far away from each other for a start. Spain is also undergoing serious problems at home. They had lost the Philippines by this point, the only place that could be of potential interest between the two.

Well I was intending it as 'in the absence of' the Russo-Japanese and Spanish American Wars, as a Spanish-Japanese War is usually written about in TLs where there those two wars are absent. But I just realised that presumes a Pre-1900 POD anyway, so I'll ask to have this thread moved.

I actually wrote it for pre-1900 and changed it to post-1900 because I thought there would be those who objected to Japan taking down a European power pre-1900 and requiring a perfect Russo-Japanese analogue, forgetting that the Pacific Spanish possessions would be in American hands by then and that the POD would be pre-1900 even if the the war were post-1900.
 
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Spanish posessions

Simply put, if Spain has anything of great value in the Western Pacific, Japan will want it, unless a lot else has changed. Unalloyed greed on one side, along with a percieved lack of the ability to protect what you have on the other, will likely lead to war, or a forced sale, or something that rebalances the greed to vulnerability ratio.

IIRC, Spain in the 1890's had no one it could count on for any sort of overseas help.

So: Spanish-American war, combined with a Anglo-Japanese alliance, could cause Britain to tacitly give Japan the OK to take the islands--and when needed, an excuse can always be found.

Or, if Spain decides to sell, Japan might demand that Spain sell to no one else, since the Philipines in anyone else's hands would be a threat.

A German offer to purchase, or even lease a significant base, would, I suspect, lead Britain to (unofficially) urge Japan to take them.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Simply put, if Spain has anything of great value in the Western Pacific, Japan will want it, unless a lot else has changed. Unalloyed greed on one side, along with a percieved lack of the ability to protect what you have on the other, will likely lead to war, or a forced sale, or something that rebalances the greed to vulnerability ratio.

Thanks. I'm trying to consider a Japan which has re-oriented itself to the Pacific, but also where the navy has greater political power vis-a-vis the navy. So a Japan which would rather stay on the good side of the British, not act like a pariah and which actually bothers to find a justification.

The thing is, I don't know anywhere where the Japanese and Spanish spheres of influence overlapped and caused friction for anything to go wrong.
 

Flubber

Banned
The thing is, I don't know anywhere where the Japanese and Spanish spheres of influence overlapped and caused friction for anything to go wrong.


How about Japanese immigration to the Philippines and subsequent economic penetration?

The US passed quite a few exclusion laws at both the state and federal level during the late 1800s and early 1900s aimed squarely at Japanese immigrants. Japan took great umbrage at those laws but, given Japan's strength relative to the US, couldn't really do anything about them.

Now transfer that situation to a Spanish-owned Philippines in the early 1900s and with Japan facing a weaker power much closer to home who knows what might happen?

One important point in all this is Russia. Japan must feel secure in northeast Asia before getting involved the Philippines and that means Russia must be dealt with. Either by war or diplomacy, Japan's interests and Russia's interests in northeast Asia must be worked out.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
^Thank you. I think that could do it. There were a significant number of Japanese Filipinos with economic influence OTL afterall.
 
The Japanese during before WWII wanted Cuba as a colony. The Philippines shouldn't be that much more unrealistic when you consider that it is simply more islands with valuable resources to exploit. The Spanish mostly kept to Manilla anyways and had very few Spaniards on any of the islands the Germans later bought. I think the Japanese also annexed the Bonin islands despite them being populated by Americans and the Japanese having been sentenced to death for centuries if they went one-tenth of the way to them.
 

Flubber

Banned
^Thank you. I think that could do it.


You're welcome and I'm sure your time line will be well received.

Two things to remember. First, you must somehow reconcile Japanese and Russian interests in northeast Asia. Japan will not go hieing off into the Pacific if Korea is in Russian hands. Or any other hands for that matter.

Second, in the event of a Spanish-Japanese War, Japan may not receive all the Philippines as the US did in the Spanish-American War. In the OTL, the European powers more or less acquiesced to the US gains because the US was "white" and because having the islands go to the US as a whole obviated the need for a European all-powers conference to divvy up the islands. The imperial game was a zero-sum by this time. Gains by one power in one area had to be offset to the other powers satisfaction.

In 1895, Europe intervened and rewrote the treaty ending the 1st Sino-Japanese War because that treaty gave Japan too much. A Japan which beats Spain in the first decade of the 20th Century might still see an European intervention in the treaty process. Spain may maintain some of the islands, other powers may gain parts of the islands, but the islands will most likely not be granted to Japan as a whole because Japan is not "white".
 
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